Integrating Culture and Higher Education: A Pragmatist Approach

Abstract

By taking a pragmatist approach to both higher education and culture, it will be seen more clearly how integration between the two may be usefully effected. Indeed, what is argued is that such an approach enables the use of important pragmatist principles — such as democracy, equality, freedom, growth, justice and tolerance — to bind culture and education closely together. It is an argument which sees the university as the best institutional embodiment of the principles and values which pragmatists think should characterize a modern (even a postmodern) liberal culture. This approach should challenge those in universities who are content that the academy is becoming a safe haven for academic capitalism.